"Woah…"
The word slipped out of Hermes's mouth before he could stop it. Colours bloomed everywhere — not just visible but tangible, pressing against his skin like warm breath, filling his nose with something sweet and electric. He could taste them too, somehow. His trip sitter said something from across the room but the words dissolved before they reached him.
He was on cloud nine. He was beyond cloud nine.
Then the floating started.
Is this it? An out of body experience?
He had always wanted to do that. Astral projection and lucid dreaming. He saw many people on TikTok who had claimed to do so. They claimed to have seen the unseen, the world beyond the veil. He wanted to do that too. Unfortunately he was unsuccessful in his attempts. He had listened to the Gateway tapes for six years now yet not once had he had an out of body experience. He suddenly felt dizzy and the floating sensation became more intense. The colours swallowed everything. His thoughts turned thick and slow like honey.
Machine elves… maybe I'll see the machine elves…
Then everything went black.
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]
The voice was cold and mechanical, utterly indifferent. It cut through the dark like a blade.
He saw a castle in ruins.
The sky above it was wrong. The sun lurched downward, vanishing, the moon clawing up to replace it, then sinking just as fast. Day and night flickered like a dying light. It happened again. Again. Countless times, until the rhythm of it became nauseating.
Then he saw them.
People and monsters, moving backwards.
What the—
Fear hit him like cold water. The figures were wrong in ways that took a moment to process — limbs missing, bodies half-assembled, still moving with a horrible purposeful energy despite it all. The monsters were large, grotesquely so, and they moved in reverse toward the people with what looked almost like tenderness, pressing severed arms back into sockets, reattaching what had been torn away.
Oh. Right. It's reversed. They're not helping them.
The realisation settled in his stomach like a stone. He watched the expressions bloom backward across the faces of the people — relief reversing into agony reversing into the blank shock of the first moment of violence. Coloured lights shot backwards into outstretched hands, into what might generously be called wands.
What is this? Harry Potter?
Bricks flew upward from rubble and slotted themselves back into walls. Towers reassembled. The castle rebuilt itself stone by stone across what felt like hours, the reversed carnage playing out in every corner simultaneously until finally — the castle stood whole. Proud. Enormous.
"Wow," Hermes said out loud.
It reminded him of Hogwarts.
The monsters retreated down the hillside in their reverse march, moving with eerie uniformity until they reached the bottom and stopped into an organised formation. He counted them. Thirty three.
At the front stood a skeletal figure. It raised its arms slowly. Its mouth opened in what must have been a scream.
Gray fog poured in from the edges of his vision, vast and hungry, swallowing the castle, the hillside, everything. Through it he watched the sun rise and fall three more times.
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]
Shadow Slave?, Hermes thought, with a sudden crystalline clarity that had no business existing in the middle of a mushroom trip.
Something hooked into his navel and pulled.
The sensation was violent and deeply wrong, like being forced through a gap far too small for a human body. He had just enough time to scream before the gray consumed him entirely.
He opened his eyes to a face approximately six inches from his own.
An elderly woman was staring at him with the focused intensity of someone who had waited their entire career for this moment — and had just watched it arrive.
Then she screamed.
"YES! YES! A TRUE SEER! UNDER MY TUTELAGE! I HAVE PRODUCED A TRUE SEER!"
Hermes recoiled so hard he nearly fell off his chair. His heart slammed against his ribs. He looked around desperately.
A classroom. Children staring at him like he'd grown three heads. High ceilings, candles, the particular dusty smell of old books. Everyone had gone completely silent except for the woman who was now gripping his shoulders and shaking him slightly.
"Tell me boy! Tell me tell me TELL ME! What did you see?! Quick! Quick!"
What the heck is going on?…
When in Rome.
"I… I saw a castle," Hermes said slowly, extricating himself from her grip as gently as possible. "In ruins. Destroyed by monsters. There was someone leading them — a skeletal figure. He raised his arms and then a gray fog spread out from where he stood and swallowed everything."
The old woman released him. Every trace of hysteria vanished from her face in an instant, replaced by an expression he couldn't quite read. She stared into the middle distance, lips slightly parted, as though she were seeing something only she could see.
The classroom held its breath.
"Foolish peasant." A drawling voice broke the silence. "Have you finally lost it? The oldest wizarding school destroyed? No one will be able to find it let alone destroy it. Ridiculous."
"Serves him right," someone muttered. "Arrogant prick." Approving nods rippled through the room. Whispers broke out.
"QUIET!" The old woman snapped back to herself with frightening speed, rounding on the class. "You are in the presence of a TRUE SEER! What would any of you know about it?! Your vision may be unrefined boy, it is your first after all, but do not worry — I will teach you! I will teach you to see the mysteries of the world itself!"
"Seers are liars," someone announced flatly. "Divination is a waste of time. It shouldn't even be compulsory."
"Eight hundred years," another added, "and not a single real Seer. Even back then they were all scammers."
"What would YOU know?!" the old woman shrieked, jabbing a finger at them. "I am a Seer! I know one when I see one! I have waited FORTY YEARS for this!"
"But professor," came a more careful, pointed voice, "with respect — how can you be certain? Your own prophecies haven't exactly—"
"THE LESSON IS OVER!" She slammed her hands down on the nearest desk hard enough to make everyone jump. Then she spun toward Hermes, composure attempting to reassemble itself with limited success, and said with tremendous dignity: "Come with me boy. The headmaster must hear of this immediately."
Hermes sat very still.
He was either having the most vivid hallucination of his life, or something had gone catastrophically wrong with his Tuesday evening.
"Come! NOW!"
"Er — right," he said, and stood up.